


Have I Got News For You May 7th, 1862

by Thorya



Category: 19th Century Scientists RPF, Have I Got News For You RPF
Genre: Gen, cross-over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 16:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3074885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thorya/pseuds/Thorya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A {Partial} Transcript of the Traveling News Panel Performance Show:<br/>Have I Got News for You<br/>Performed at London Theater, May 7th, 1862<br/>Guests: Florence Nightingale, Charles Darwin, and Professor James Maxwell</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have I Got News For You May 7th, 1862

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astrokath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrokath/gifts).



A Transcript of the Traveling News Panel Performance Show

Have I Got News for You, Performed at London Theater, May 7th, 1862

 

Charles Darwin: Good Evening and welcome to Have I Got News for You, I am Charles Darwin. This week in the news, the Americans continue their civil war and for the first time ever an iron clad warship takes to the seas. Ships made of metal? Thank God we let them go. The crown ends its alliance with the French in Mexico. “An alliance with the French didn’t work out? I don’t believe it!” said no one. Queen Victoria continues her period of isolation, but given all the rain recently that’s true for most of London.[1]

On Ian’s team tonight, one of England’s most notable nurses and the first woman to be accepted as a member of the Royal Statistical Society. Perhaps if she spent more time making pies and less time playing with pie charts, she could have brought back one man from Crimea instead of one-hundred thousand. Miss Florence Nightingale.

{applause}

With Paul tonight is a Scottish mathematical physicist with a professorship at King’s College. He has recently invented a colour photograph, just in time for the sun to never shine again. He recently published a paper on electrostatics and has made such wild claims as electricity and magnetism being the same thing as light. In an upcoming paper he’ll make an even more ridiculous claim, that Haggis is the same thing as food. Please welcome Professor James Maxwell.

{applause}

Now we start with the biggest stories of the month with our pantomime players acting out these stories. Ian and Florence take a look at this.

{Players begin acting out very legal activities and debates, the team watches for ~30 seconds)

Ian: Well it’s clearly parliament, they just keep doing the same thing over and over and the scenes not going anywhere.

Florence: It’s the house of commons, they’re behaving with too much dignity for it to be the house of lords.

Ian: Oh right, that fellow in the middle must be Sir John Rolt. This must be the most recent attempt at reforming equity and law. Rolt’s law they’re calling it. Supposedly they’re going to pass it this time. They’ve only been trying for a decade. If you look close you can see the strings on Rolt’s arms that Lord Derby uses to prance him about.

Paul: Ian, are you implying that Lord Derby had a chance to shove his arm up an M.P. and he opted to go for strings instead?

Ian: He might have had better luck with a more hands on approach. The commissions had 40 years of practice, decades of debate and one act of parliament with nothing solved yet. By the time they’re done with the current round, the acts going to be about as useful as last week’s copy of Loyd’s List. It’s a novel idea, let’s make the court system in this country actually work.

Florence:  Derby? That little conservative shit, they let you be prime minister for 2 months and you think you know everything. What do a bunch of politicians know about how much money a hospital needs to operate?

Charles {Responding to Florence}: That’s going to get cut from the official transcript for sure. You can’t call a former prime minister a little shit.

James: Of course not, everyone knows that the PM is the biggest shit in London.

Charles: Dear God, at this rate they’re going to pack me off to South America again.

Ian: Well, you can always take them to court about it and spend the next decade trying to resolve it. By then they’ll have repealed Rolt’s law and be ready to have another go at it.

{laughter}

Charles: Moving on. Ian and Florence were right, this is the news that parliament is moving forward with Rolt’s Law, which should fix the issue of equity and law in British courts. Again. It looks like the Pantomime Players are ready for round two. James and Paul your turn.

{Players begin acting out carnival activities and pantomiming large machines}

Paul: People are walking about, it’s some sort of festival. Big machines.

James: One of the spectators is debating now. It looks like we’re back in parliament.

Paul: This is the news that the circus came to London and no one noticed because they thought it was a parliament meeting.

{One of the players falls to the ground miming pain in their leg, other players mimic machines around them}

James: Now one of the people’s injured. Was there some sort of industrial accident recently?

Paul: Oh, I know. An M.P. was attacked by a giant mechanical Tiger that mauled its leg.

Charles: No.

Paul: A mechanical loin?

Florence: It’s the international exhibition in South Kensington.

Paul: An M.P. was attacked by a giant mechanical international exhibition.

Charles: Florence is right, but what exactly of note happened there.

Paul: A giant mechanical tiger was attacked by an M.P.

Charles: No.

James: Was someone injured at the exhibition?

Charles: Yes, who?

Paul: An M.P.?

Charles: Yes. This is the news that M.P. Robert Slaney broke his leg at the first day of the international exhibition when he fell through the floorboards of an exhibition platform. When asked to comment on the accident, Slaney replied, “I really should have seen that coming, I’m a Whig so I haven’t had a platform you could stand on in years.”

Ian: {laughing} Oh, oh, harsh.

Charles: Slaney continued to tour the exhibition and stated that he wasn’t going to let something like a broken leg keep him down. He plans to continue to attend parliament, which just goes to show that you can’t keep an M.P. from voting even when they don’t have a leg to stand on.[2] Slaney represents Shropshire, a region of the country known for producing the toughest and brightest individuals in the country[3].

Florence: In my experience, if parliament members are anything like soldiers, what Slaney actually needs is to eat less exhibition food and to sit quietly for a few hours a day without arguing. He’ll probably be dead within a week.

Paul: What _England_ needs is for more parliament members to sit quietly for a few hours a day.

Florence: You know a woman in parliament would actually listen to a medical professional.

Ian: A woman in parliament? Perish the thought. Something might actually get done.

Charles: Perhaps in a few generations women will have developed the necessary adaptations to lead.

Florence: Perhaps, it is society and not women that need to evolve.

Charles: Society does not need to adapt to accommodate the inferior.

James: Charles, I am sure you are an excellent biologist, but if I remember correctly in your opinion any sort of inferior man is destined to be exterminated. If a woman is just an inferior man, should not she have perished from this earth long ago? This is outside my field of study, but even I can foresee issues for the race of man if that were the case. Therefore, since women have persisted, by your own theory are they not equal?[4]

Florence and Paul laugh.

Ian: Watch out Charles, it looks like he’s made a monkey out of you. Or was it your theory that did that?

Charles: Hmmph, let’s move on to the picture round.

{The players wheel out an easel covered with a drop cloth. A spot lantern is shined on it.}

Charles: The points go to the first team to identify this image.

{The players remove the drop cloth. A set of images of a large hall filled with vases is shown.}

Ian: Is it somewhere in India?

Florence: No, it’s a set of images being shown at the international exhibition.

James: They’re stereoscopic images. Two cameras are used and they are placed side-by-side to capture each image. When viewed by one eye each, they allow a viewer to perceive the scene with depth.

Florence: Right, a large number were commissioned for the international exhibition. I believe William England was head photographer.

Charles: That’s correct, Professor Maxwell, this is one of the stereoscopic images being shown for the next few months.

Paul: Two cameras and the most interesting thing they thought to capture was a hall filled with vases? Someone needs to buy this William fellow a drink and introduce him to a nice lady. Then we might get an image worth seeing in 3 dimensions.

Florence: {Ignoring Darwin’s obvious snub} If you want really interesting images, a _lady_ is the last person you should introduce him to.

James: Are you proposing that streetwalkers and prostitutes are superior to the upper classes?

Florence: In many respects, yes. At least the lower class women are allowed to have a thought in their head and don’t wile away their days in thoughtless luxury. And they’d likely be more inclined to show the assets that Paul’s interested in seeing.

Charles: Madam, our society is arranged by class for the betterment of all. Think before you speak.

Ian: Of course, the upper classes wouldn’t have arranged things for their benefit. They only ever have the interests of the people at heart.

{End Transcript}

 

 

[1] The spring of 1862 was especially rainy in the British Isles and Queen Victoria was mourning her husband’s death.

[2] Robert Slaney died from gangrene in his leg three weeks later.

[3] Charles Darwin is from Shropshire as well.

[4] I couldn’t actually find anything about Maxwell’s views on women, but he ascribed to antipositivism (i.e. that the social realm is not subject to the same study techniques as the natural world and physical sciences) so I don’t think it’s a big stretch for him to disagree with Darwin’s social views.

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to have this ready in time for Christmas, but it turns out making pop culture references from 150 years ago is hard and requires a ton of research. As much as possible, I tried to stay true to the historical figures' opinions and keep all the events real, though I'm not sure what would have actually been "in the news".
> 
> Also, Florence Nightingale is a total statistical bad-ass and all around awesome woman, why do we only ever hear about her being a nurse?
> 
> Maxwell was the hardest to write, which is funny since I'm most familiar with his work IRL. But he apparently also liked poetry, so I think he must not have been a complete stick in the mud.


End file.
